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Frisco ISD Athletes Undergo Heart Screenings

Several students in the Frisco Independent School District will undergo preventative heart exams Thursday. They're meant to potentially identify contributing factors to the number one killer of student athletes in this country: sudden cardiac arrest. (Published Thursday, Nov. 1, 2018)

Several students in the Frisco Independent School District will undergo preventative heart exams Thursday. They're meant to potentially identify contributing factors to the number one killer of student athletes in this country: sudden cardiac arrest.

“The issues they may be finding on these tests, you won’t find anywhere else, not with questions, with a physical exam,” said Scott English, an athletic trainer at Frisco Liberty High School, about the life-saving effort.

Cody Stephens was a high school senior from Crosby, Texas, who died unexpectedly in his sleep a few weeks prior to graduation in the spring of 2012 from a previously undiagnosed heart condition. Stephens, a mountain of a young man at 6’9” and 289 pounds, had a football scholarship to continue his athletic career at Tarleton State University in Stephenville.

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The foundation, which is dedicated to making these preventative examinations more readily available for Texas teenagers, has partnered with approximately 250 school districts across the state, including several in Dallas-Fort Worth:

Arlington ISD

Azle ISD

Birdville ISD

Carroll ISD

Celina ISD

Coppell ISD

Dallas ISD

DeSoto ISD

Denton ISD

Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD

Duncanville ISD

Fort Worth ISD

Frisco ISD

Kaufman ISD

McKinney ISD

Northwest ISD

Prosper ISD

Red Oak ISD

The organization has already helped to diagnose 85 previously undiscovered heart conditions which could have resulted in serious consequences for the student athletes.

“That’s been the most rewarding whenever you happen to have an abnormality come back and I get to hear the story from the parents and the students saying, ‘You saved my life,’” said Nathan Schwarz, who helped to administer the ECGs for the Frisco students on behalf of the Cody Stephens Foundation. “There’s nothing more rewarding than to be able to see a kid who a doctor [later] said, ‘If you didn’t get screened you might not be here today.’”